That's Gustav Penna, he's a pretty experienced Steadicam operator. More than any of us, anyway, unless someone's holding out on us. That's 100% the rig's fault, not his - Taking your hands off the arm is a pretty normal procedure for testing the balance, and the manufacturer has a similar video on their own channel showing off the strength, with one of their in-house guys doing the same hands of jumping in place routine.

By the look of it, what failed was the turnbuckle, not the operator or the arm itself- if you look at his hip, where the arm attaches to the socket block, you can see it snap, followed by the arm flopping down once the sled came off the mounting post when the counterweight hit the floor. It would have failed if he was salsa dancing, or if he was operating the textbook picture-perfect of a stedi op - doing what he did was not the real cause of failure, it should have taken that with no trouble. After reeling it out, on a well-balanced, well made arm, she should have been able to swing it back to himself just by moving his hips.

I looked up more about the arm, too, since it looked weird - Haven't listened to the episode yet to see of you mention it, but it turns out the entire thing is a a pretty cool setup. Works on elastic bands rather than springs, it's cheap, lightweight, simple, and works pretty bloody well, apparently. A pretty impressive bit of kit, all told.

It was a video guy I know that told me that when he let me try his steadicam rig... so maybe he was just afraid of me! XD Rewatching it, though, I see what you mean about the turnbuckle.

Oh yeah, if you don't know what you're doing, it's not recommended - if I owned a rig and was letting someone inexperienced give it a try, I'd tell them the same thing. It only takes a moment's inattention to send your expensive gear into the dirt. Just that one small metal piece that failed in the video is 100+ dollars - pro steadicam rigs are in the "Mortgage your house" region for prices.

They are meant to only stabilize the camera, not to hold it entirely by itself - but most setups of that type will hold the camera by itself, with weight allowance to spare. You wouldn't want to shoot that way, but it shouldn't come tumbling down if you don't have your hands on it.

How about a show on how to buy airline tickets since apparently Rym can find tickets that AREN'T the same goddamn price across every single airline?

1. Buy your tickets more than a month in advance2. Only fly from major airports (the destination can be a hop, but not your home airport)3. Use Kayak4. Clear your cookies before you search specific airlines' sites

That's it.

The only times I've ever seen the "there's only one price" situation, it's if I have to fly out of a smaller airport like BOS instead of JFK. Really, just always be flying out of JFK.

In engine turbo charging this is what's known as compressor surge, it's what happens when you try to run too much boost too soon. Basically when there's too many air molecules at a certain compressor flow, it becomes unstable and the pressure builds until you have a compressor stall (everything stops momentarily).